


Bloodstains

by feldman



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Catholicism wow, Crucifixion, Gen, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-05-27
Updated: 2003-05-27
Packaged: 2018-09-13 18:36:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9136564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman
Summary: People do weird shit to ease their soul, to come to terms with their sins.  For Spike this means crucifixion.  For Xander, this means light carpentry and laundry.  I wrote this in May 2003 and promptly forgot about it for 13 years and 7 months.





	

Innocently, I tell you. It started _innocently_.

"You got a saw I can borrow, mate?"

Then he needed a screwdriver. Then he needed a flat head screwdriver. When he asked for eyebolts and chain I decided some supervision was in order. He told me to bring my largest sledgehammer.

"Nice cross." It's made of 4x6's, and it hangs from the ceiling on pulley chains. "Odd choice for a vampire, but I guess the new soul is as good a reason as any to redecorate."

"It's not there for show."

"What, are you gonna hang your Emeril cookware on it or something?"

"Myself."

I set the sledge down, the head clanging on the concrete. It certainly was big enough for him. The pulleys look old but well-oiled, and there are scrape marks in the sawdust on the floor. That's when I notice the railroad spikes. "Let me get this straight. You want to be crucified."

"For a time, yeah."

"You know, oddly enough, some people might find this highly offensive."

He lights his cigarette, cupping around the flame like he's outdoors. "It's one of the more brutal ways to go, yeah."

"No. I mean pretending to be Christ. No grand gesture is going to wipe your slate clean."

"I don't need you to understand, I just need you to pin me up there. If I could, I'd do it my damned self and not let anyone know."

"Well I need to understand. Humor the guy with the sledgehammer."

He smokes at me.

"I mean, why don't you just go to confession or something if you're feeling religious?"

"Go and sin no more, right?" He glances at it, then looks at me. "You think a few novenas'll be enough of a demarcation between what I was and what I am now?"

"Better than this." I sweep my arm toward it and we look at it together. "This is ridiculous."

He's inhaled most of the cigarette before he talks again. "You have no idea how many people I did that to. How many times I watched." He crushes the butt beneath his toe. "How many times I drank from their wounds. I need to do this to myself."

"There's got to be a better way than this."

"Well I could mope about for a hundred years like Angel before I get on with this soul business, but I'm not a brooder, I'm a doer."

A commencement of sorts. The opening ceremonies, if you will, of the new improved Spike. It made sense after a fashion, though not by the time I was driving home alone afterward. "I suppose you'll need to borrow my sledgehammer."

He lowers the chains holding the cross up. "And your aim. I want a good clean nailing, so hit the railroad spikes and not me."

"But didn't they used to break the criminal's legs if he wasn't dying fast enough?"

"I never did that. Dru was frightened by broken dolls." He lays it flat on the floor and pulls off his shirt, kicks off his shoes.

"That's more than enough." He stretches out on the cross and I realize the frame fits him perfectly. The craftsmanship is disturbing. "I take it crosses don't burn you anymore?"

"I think this one's too big. Doesn't feel like a cross so it doesn't work."

"Ah."

"You gonna stand there all night, Harris? This isn't a union job, you know."

I pick up the sledge handle, walk closer to the cross. The iron spikes are heavy and rusty black. I wonder if he stole them special for tonight or dug them out of a keepsake drawer. "Scared?"

He watches me set one at each corner. "A bit nervous, yeah."

He arranges his bony feet one over the other on the tiny platform. I concentrate on getting the correct angle to go through into the main vertical beam. The first strike of the sledge probably doesn't even leave a bruise.

"Sorry." Yeah Harris, get it together. Think of it as a very thick piece of wood. I tape the head of the spike a few times for aim, then swing it twice in quick succession. Driving a nail into wood, just driving a nail.

"Uh." A nail that grinds between bones. It bites into the wood on the third swing and is buried to the head on the fourth. Blood wells out and spills to the floor. Pig blood. It's just pig blood. "Oh that was definitely not wood."

His voice shakes. "Awfully snug."

I don't sound any better. "Pride of workmanship. Though next time you may want to get a butcher for this part."

"He's a bit preoccupied bein' butched right now." He lifts his head from the beam and looks at me, concerned. "You look pale, do you need to take a break before doing the rest?"

"You," I shake the bloody sledgehammer at him, "are a very strange man."

Despite his cool, there's fingernail marks in the wood by his hands. I set the tip of the spike between the arm bones but he slips out from under it.

"Do the palm."

"Listen, I've seen enough Discovery Channel to know it was through the wrist."

"Yeah, but I did it through the palm sometimes."

"It'll tear through."

"Guy like me, about two hours. Then you can do me through the wrists."

"No."

"What, you've got something in the oven? Good episode of Next Generation on tonight?"

"I'm not," I stop and try again with my voice back in the lower register, "I'm not going to mutilate you any more than necessary."

He sits up, steadying himself with fingers on the floor. He takes the other nail and points to himself. "I judge that. Me. I point, you swing. Besides, it'll heal in a week or so. If it bother you, go see a movie. I should be ready for a re-do when you get back."

"Fine, whatever. Lay down."

Hands are softer, thinner. They flex. They bleed more. He hands me the last nail and part of me wants to put the sledge handle through his chest so he'll stop looking human.

The last nail is what does it, completing the circuit. It really gets going by the time I've hung him back up, the sound of his skin against the wood is like bacon that's been taken off the heat and is bubbling slowly in the grease.

I can't stand the sizzling or the dripping, so I sit in my car for exactly two hours.

Just like my first attempt at pot roast, he's kind of shriveled and tough looking. The nails haven't ripped out, but they've pulled through his hands like heavy earrings through an old lady's earlobes. He's pooled about two pigs worth onto the floor.

"Xander..." His cheekbones are sharp under leathery skin.

"You look like hell." I slacken the chains until the vertical beam touches the floor, then shove it forward so that the toast doesn't land Spike side down. "I thought you said it'd only take two hours to go right through your hands."

"Didn't do enough vamps to get a feel for the difference, I guess."

"Right." The problem becomes how to reposition the nails, which are sunk into the wood pretty far. "You're the expert, how do I get the spikes out?"

"I uh, I used to pull them out myself. Here, I'll give you room to work." He grits his teeth and wiggles his hand off of the spike, wincing as the flat head pops free.

The metal is sticky with pig blood. Hell, the radiator flush he's given himself probably got the last dregs of human out of him, too. I use a two-handed grip and brace against the beam with my feet, rocking it loose until it flies up out of the wood.

I wipe the blood from my hands with his shirt.

He's sitting up again, bent around himself with his hands in his armpits. His back looks like hashbrowns, but not as bad as the sizzling made me expect. "Are you ready for the next round, or have you come to your senses?"

He breathes in, ribs sliding under the rawhide of his chest. "No on both counts." He eases back and unfolds his arms like bat wings, minus the leathery wingy parts. "Go between the bones."

"I did take biology, you know." His anatomy is obvious, if pruney, and the nails go in easier this time. "I hate to say it, but it looks like you've run out of stuff to bleed. On the plus side, you feel a lot like drywall."

On the minus side, his hands still twitch like they're alive. "So, uh, how long are you planning to stay up there? You know, if Willow sees you on the Mummy Roadshow, she'll tell Buffy."

"She'll get suspicious in a couple of days. I'll pull myself off tomorrow."

I crank the chain, lifting him into the air again. "It's your party. And a damn bloody one at that."

"Sorry...looks like I got most of it on you."

"Heck, I wouldn't be a Scooby if I didn't know how to get bloodstains out."

He sniffles and chokes, and I snag my car keys before he starts crying or something. Instead, he laughs.

"What's so funny?"

He ruined hands clutch at nothing and the chuckles wring his jerkied body like sobs. "Bloodstains."

He looks like The Fool, only right side up. Which I guess would be upside down for The Fool.


End file.
